Former Royal Marines Commando, sailor, defender of ships from Somali pirates, motivational speaker, film maker and world-record holder - this week Ruth Copland features her interview with Mick Dawson. Having served…Read More

Local News

(10:00) Open Farm Tours is hosting its annual fall fundraising dinner next month in Watsonville. The dinner features Cuban-inspired cuisine, Salsa dancing and speakers. The fundraiser will be from 4:00…Read More

(07:50) Santa Cruz County - Dignity Health Dominican Hospital announced the first phase of the $4.3 million Healing Courtyard project has been completed. Phase one includes: The Norman and Maureen Benito…Read More

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Saturday Food Chain

Michael Olson produced, wrote and/or photographed feature-length news for a variety of media, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner newspapers, Skiing and Small Space Gardening magazines,NBC, ABC, Australian Broadcast Commission, and KQED Public Television networks. His production and photography helped win a National Emmy nomination for NBC Magazine with David Brinkley. Olson is the author of MetroFarm, the Ben Franklin Book of the Year Finalist and Executive Producer and Host of the syndicated Saturday Food Chain radiotalk show, which received the Ag/News Show of the Year Award from the California Legislature. He recently authored Tales from a Tin Can, which is the oral-history of a World War II US Navy destroyer that earned a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly.

Business Person

Olson designed, blended and packaged a fertilizer for container-grown house and garden plants; certified and registered the product as a “specialty fertilizer” with the State of California; and sold the product to the national lawn and garden market. Olson has over two decades of broadcast media management and, as General Manager of newstalk radio stations KSCO & KOMY in Santa Cruz, California, has helped hundreds of locally-owned businesses compete against national chains. Olson is currently a partner in the MO MultiMedia Group of Santa Cruz, California.

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential to health. These fats cannot be manufactured by our body; they must be obtained through the foods we eat.

Throughout time, we obtained essential fatty acids from the meats we ate, because the animals from which we obtained the meat ate greens rich in Omega-3s. When we confined those animals in feedlots, and fed them grain, instead of greens, the essential Omega-3 fatty acids went missing from their meat, and from our diet. As these fats are essential, we must find them someplace else, or suffer the consequences.

Like many ardent gymnasts, Joar Opheim often suffered from the aches and pains of sprained muscles. Unlike many others, however, Joar lived next to the frigid waters of the North Sea and so had easy access to a means for treating aches and pains– Omega-3 rich fish oils.

As an MBA student at Santa Clara University, Opheim saw opportunity in Omega-3 deficient industrial foods, and so built a healthy business in California from the fish he caught in the North Sea. This Omega 3 entrepreneur leads us to ask…

We build our farms, gardens, and homes to suit our needs, then they sneak in and steal everything they can. And there are millions, and billions, and maybe even trillions of them!

There are the deer that jump the fence and eat the roses; gophers that tunnel in and eat the roots out from under the new peach tree; raccoons that march their entire family through the dog door to wreak havoc in the kitchen; rats that move in and foul up the place with fleas and fecal matter; skunks that waddle through as if not to be denied; and perhaps the most pernicious pest of all, people who think all property is their property.

If we do not control pests, pests will control us. What can we do to gain control.

One control strategy is to poison the pests. The friendly farm and garden supply store down the way will, most likely, stock enough poison to wipe out several million pests, give or take. However, we have come to recognize a significant downside to this strategy: Poisons are indiscriminate. When we poison mosquitos, we also poison pelicans.

Another strategy is to outwit the pests. As Sun Tsu said, in The Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” And so we go in search of ways to control pests by asking: Which pests pester us most? What are the seasons of my pests? And…

Guests: Various Participants of the Eat Local First FestivalEAT LOCAL, FIRST!“Charity begins at home” is an expression found, in one form or another, by people of all beliefs throughout recorded history.

The expression asserts, in the simplest of terms, that we should care of ourselves, our families, and our communities, first. By first taking care of ourselves, we can develop the strength and resources to reach outside of ourselves to help others.

The United States did develop itself first, and then proceeded to help others in the developing world to the extent that, today, many neglected American communities resemble the poorer communities of the developing world. And, in spite of the millions, and billions, and trillions being poured into these domestic communities by the U.S. government, they just keep getting poorer.

Who will resurrect these communities, if not the community members themselves? What better way to begin the resurrection than by “thinking local, first?” With this thought in mind we pause to ask… Why eat local, first?

Food banks are based on the principal that surplus food should be deposited in a facility where it may be withdrawn by those who hunger.

Today there are nearly a thousand food banks in North America distributing billions of pounds of surplus food through thousands of non-governmental agencies to millions of people in poverty.

Given the number of food banks, the amount of food they distribute, and the numbers of people being fed, it might seem that food banks have always been part of the social landscape. In fact, they are a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning with the great recession of the 1980s at the St. Vincent de Paul community dining hall in Phoenix, Arizona.

Today food banks are becoming a very big part of many communities, as evidenced by Toronto’s The Stop, which grew from a $250,000 a-year agency in a rat-infested warehouse to a $4,500,000 a-year agency offering farmers markets, catering, gourmet food, and community food events.

These non-governmental food banks, and the people who run them, lead us to ask…

Food banks are based on the principal that surplus food should be deposited in a facility where it may be withdrawn by those who hunger.

Today there are nearly a thousand food banks in North America distributing billions of pounds of surplus food through thousands of non-governmental agencies to millions of people in poverty.

Given the number of food banks, the amount of food they distribute, and the numbers of people being fed, it might seem that food banks have always been part of the social landscape. In fact, they are a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning with the great recession of the 1980s at the St. Vincent de Paul community dining hall in Phoenix, Arizona.

Today food banks are becoming a very big part of many communities, as evidenced by Toronto’s The Stop, which grew from a $250,000 a-year agency in a rat-infested warehouse to a $4,500,000 a-year agency offering farmers markets, catering, gourmet food, and community food events.

These non-governmental food banks, and the people who run them, lead us to ask…

THE RIGHT TO OWN A PUBLIC FOODShould a private party be allowed to own a public food?

Consider an item of patented food, like the strawberry: You can touch it, smell it, and eat it, but you may not own it because it contains the intellectual property of someone else.

For even more enjoyment, consider the “Vegas Strip Steak.”

In 2012, the American Bar Association magazine reported the filing of a patent by Oklahoma State University on the method by which a “Vegas Strip Steak” cut of beef might be extracted from a carcas. This method was apparently unknown by milleniums of butchers until discovered by an OSU meat specialist.

If the patent for the “Vegas Strip Steak” is granted, anyone who wishes to extract the cut from a carcass would be required to get a license from the patent holder– OSU. In simple terms, obtaining a “Vegas Strip Steak” patent would give OSU control over the cut of meat in every beef cow on the planet. Were your neighbor to butcher his cow and offer you a “Vegas Strip Steak” for your having aided in the endeavor, the two of you would then become common thieves.

This brief consideration of food as intellectual property leads us to ask: How does an item of natural food become the intellectual property of a private party? How does the private party maintain control of this intellectual property; and…

EAT, DRINK, VOTE!For whom should we vote to lead us to good eating?Fortunately, this is an off year, which means there are no major elections to distract us from considering the politics of food.

(Of course, we could discuss the politics of food in an election year, but then our considerations would be hardened by you being on one side of the fence, me on the other, and the both of us would be throwing apples across the fence at each other!)

So here we are, with no apples in hand, nor any political fence to divide us, to calmly discuss how to vote for someone, or something, to lead us to the eating of good food.

Given the number of diets we engage in, the number of times we engage in those diets, and the fact that we keep getting bigger and bigger, and requiring more and more medical care, its plain to see we need someone to lead the way. Should we vote for Democrats? Should we vote for Republicans? Or, should we vote for something else?

Guests: Joann S. Grohman, Author of Keeping a Family Cow HAVE A (GREEN) COW!Have you ever tasted raw milk?“Don’t have a cow!”

Some complain that cows cause global warming by passing too much gas, and demand they be eliminated from the human food chain. Before we herd cows out the door, however, perhaps we should consider this: The family cow can be the perfect one-stop food factory.

Through the wild fermentation of the rumen, a cow can turn the grass upon which we would starve, into a high-protein food more perfect than any food we could buy in any supermarket. And we need not chop down any forest, divert any grain, nor fight any wars to get food from a family cow.

When the cow has aged, and no longer produces milk, we can process her into meat and fill the family’s freezer.

Bottom line: No food comes more complete, at less cost, then the fresh, whole milk we can get from the family cow. And though her milk may be white, the family cow can be very green!